Kasich, DeWine both call for reforms of pharmacy middlemen

Darrel Rowland The Columbus Dispatch @darreldrowland

Wednesday

Jul 11, 2018 at 6:30 PMJul 11, 2018 at 10:34 PM

Gov. John Kasich and Attorney General Mike DeWine both said Wednesday the state must do more to make sure Ohio taxpayers are getting their money's worth from middlemen getting more than $200 million a year to process drugs for the poor and disabled.

And both cited the secrecy built into the process that hampers public scrutiny of these little-known pharmacy benefit managers, dubbed PBMs.

“I think the reason why you want to have transparency is because these plans don’t want to have people making money that they could make, to be honest with you," Kasich said. Can we do any more? Of course we can do more, there’s no question about it

“Of course we need to scrutinize this and look at this but the first step is to fully understand it and have the plans in a position of where we’re not giving them money that they can pass on to somebody else, that they’re not even aware of, that makes our cost higher.

A consultant hired by the Ohio Department of Medicaid discovered that the PBMs are getting three to six times the usual market rate, although so far Medicaid has taken no action to remedy those possible overcharges. CVS Caremark and OptumRX are the two PBMs in the Medicaid program.

"The state contracts with PBMs for managed care organizations ... to get us the best deal on prescription drugs," DeWine noted. "That’s the goal, the stated goal. But, due to secrecy around this process, it is very difficult for us to know if that is truly and really happening.

"As governor, I'm going to get a better deal for taxpayers than we're getting now because we will create a transparent bidding process to that the people can know, the people of this state can know, what these drugs really cost so we can get a fair deal for the taxpayers and so we will not get ripped off."

Dispatch reporter Randy Ludlow contributed to this story.

drowland@dispatch.com

@darreldrowland

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